One of the biggest advantages of your small business is your ability to go from concept to market much faster than a giant corporation. Those large mega-million corporations have so many more processes and steps to hurdle before a single item makes it to the shelf. However, when you work on a smaller scale, you can work far more efficiently and take the steps needed for product to develop much faster. However, that same bonus also makes things more difficult when you consider smaller budgets and fewer resources. So, as you work on your product development plan and you consider just how to work as efficiently and effectively as possible, take notice of a few tools that any high tech team will find incredibly valuable.

Any product developer knows that the majority of the time for development is spent writing code. If you don’t have the tools for building great-looking, functional code, then you’ll lose out on a lot of valuable time. Sublime Text Editor offers you and your team an easy to use program to make writing that code a lot faster and even a little easier. There’s a one time fee of $70, but you can download and try the software for free first. Check it out, because if you or anyone on your team spends a lot of time writing code, this will be a very handy tool.

Another important step in the product development process is managing your workflow. A robust workflow management tool is increasingly more valuable in today’s workplace. Trello is a highly visual workflow management system that looks a little bit like Pinterest, but with organized boards — ideas, to do, doing, done and more. You can use it by yourself or invite your whole team into a board, with sections to comment, list deadlines and other important notes. The best part about this handy tool is that it’s totally free to use. If you have a large company and need bigger tools, Trello has paid accounts at the higher level, but for basic use, you can use it completely free.

Communication is also incredibly important when you are in any organization, and it’s a crucial part of the product development process. When you have many members on any team, you’ll need a tool that will help you easily share ideas, ask for help with features or address problems with a new product. Slack is a great tool for communication within your team, with channels to organize your teams, direct messaging, private groups and more. It’s totally free to use the basic level, and there are inexpensive options to upgrade your Slack service for as little as $6.67 per month.